Your Leadership Shadow

Your Leadership Shadow

If there is one thing to embrace in the last few months of the year, it’s taking time out to understand what it truly means to be a leader, why teams should follow us, and acknowledging that the teams we lead do not have an inherent right to exist.

I speak with leaders every week, and all are incredibly busy. ?And that’s the problem. ?We have been so busy in the last 3 years (since the pandemic), that we’ve not stopped to take time out of the business to truly consider what it means to be a leader, and the shadow we leave with each interaction?

Research shows that expectations of leaders at every level have increased dramatically, yet do we take time out and give ourselves space to think; and to reflect on the mindsets we bring to the workplace every day?

The challenges faced at each leadership layer

If you wish to set up your business for success in the next year, to be more productive in what is a challenging market, we suggest working on one thing between now and the festive season: what it means to be a leader.

Why? ?Because at every layer of leadership, from frontline leaders to the senior executive, there are key challenges:

• Individual contributors must deliver performance excellence through key technical and interpersonal skills;
• Emerging leaders needs to prove their leadership competence;
• Frontline leaders have to prioritise their people-focused tasks, like goal setting, coaching, delegating, engaging and building accountability – equal to or above their own individual performance;
• Senior leaders must optimise both strategic and operational performance, and build a leadership pipeline; and
• The executive leaders balance long-term strategy with short-term performance and differentiating through culture.

Above all, each layer is faced with doing more with less.

Create the space to address these challenges

?To address these challenges, and as a consequence, increase engagement and productivity, we’ve created a 7-step process for you to consider:

1.?????Identify the key staff layers within your organisation;

2.?????For each layer, identify the 1, 2 or 3 activities that are critical to their role;

3.?????Identify the leadership mindset that underpins each activity;

4.?????Build a range of world-class learning assets that explore these mindsets

5.?????Focus on one activity per month in the lead up to the festive season;

6.?????Lead, facilitate and champion discussion; and

7.?????Support with detailed communications.

The aim is simple: to engage people in their thinking so they understand what leadership really means at their level, and what it looks like at the layers above. Investing here sets the foundations for the very behaviours that produce results.

In the word of Stephen Covey: “If you want to make minor, incremental changes and improvements, work on behaviour. ?If you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on how your leaders think”.